Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Parking Lot Etiquette

Driving
a 1998 Subaru wagon with 205 thousand miles on it doesn’t put me in a
hurry to get anywhere. I find keeping a lackadaisical throttle foot to
be an effective survival technique, designed to milk every remaining
mile out my noble Japanese steed. It’s also indicative of my
thrift-artist financial situation, which as it stands requires I shop
religiously at Costco as if it were a giant welfare box store.

If
I need groceries, I go to Costco. If I need a shirt, I go to Costco. If
I need tires, I go to Discount Tire; Costco’s nitrogen-filled tires
scare me. But that doesn’t affect my general complacency when tooling
around a Costco parking lot to find a vacant space, nor does it negate
my outrage at the affront to my dignity that took place there recently.

As
I’ve established, Costco is a pillar of my life. You know the Kirkland
Signature brand of everything Costco sells? That’s a product of my
hometown - Kirkland, Washington; I practically invented that crap
myself.

Still, I don’t roll into a Costco parking lot expecting to
be treated as royalty, much less find a parking space anywhere near the
front entrance. Even if I did, I would still park a half-mile away in
the back of the lot, just to avoid the ravenous crazy people who think
if they cheat a walk by parking in a front row stall they won’t have to
spend forty-five minutes PUSHING AN OVERSIZED SHOPPING CART AROUND A
WAREHOUSE.

But I’m used to these lost souls stopping their cars
directly in the flow of traffic, sometimes with their blinkers on,
waiting patiently for another shopper to unload two months’ worth of
groceries into their vehicle. It doesn’t bother me at all – I just drive
around.

And then one day it happened. Never, ever in my tenure as
a Costco Gold Star member have I seen the parking space sloppy-seconds
maneuver performed in tandem by a duo of able-bodied shoppers. But there
it was, splayed out before my front bumper: Two cars, facing the same
direction, each waiting for a parking spot on opposite sides of the
aisle.

They were completely blocking the lot’s entryway traffic in both directions.

The
calm inside me began to bend, rapidly losing its elasticity. I couldn’t
back up to avoid the obstruction. A line of cars had formed behind me. A
minute passed… a minute and a half. It was already too much. What in
the hell were the rest of us supposed to do? We were being held hostage
by these louts!

I tooted my horn just long enough to emphasize a
moderate degree of frustration. The lady holding up the left of the
blockade turned on her blinker and pointed out her window to identify
the spot she was waiting for, as if all of us had mistakenly assumed she
was stopping up rush-hour traffic back to the Costco gas station for no
good reason.

I don’t do road rage. What happened next was going
to be a vigilante display of social justice that couldn’t be stopped or
reasoned with.

Any man worth his Costco card knows the corners of
his car like a cat knows its whiskers extend to the width of its body.
By the looks of the terrible scene, there would be just enough room to
squeeze my Subaru between the vulture lady’s car on the right and the
rear bumper of the vehicle being loaded with a Kirkland Signature bounty
on the left. Whether my roof-rack would clear the underside of the open
hatch was up for grabs. Cats don’t have whiskers on top of their heads.

I
inched through the opening, making sure to alleviate the uncomfortable
tension of the pass by pointing through my windshield at where I
intended to go. And it was done. Someone with a car that could easily be
totaled from a minor fender bender had taken a stand against a bully,
one who thought putting every Costco shopper in the greater downtown
Seattle area behind her own convenience was her right for paying a $55
membership fee.

She might not have learned a lesson from my livid
close quarters roll-by, but at the very least her arrogance was
challenged by that of another. If she didn’t appreciate the gesture I
hope she stopped to wonder why.